After Image

Artist Michael Warren (b. 1950)

Date1984

MediumWood

Dimensions275 × 275 × 275 cm

ClassificationsSculpture

Credit LineCollection & image © Hugh Lane Gallery. Purchased from the Solomon Gallery, Dublin, 1986. © Michael Warren.

Object number1694

DescriptionWorking in wood, steel concrete and stone, Michael Warren was initially apprenticed to sculptor Frank Morris in Wicklow before studying in Milan from 1971 to 1975. However, it was his introduction to Eduardo Chillida's work that had had the greatest impact on him. The Spanish sculptor's relationship to his materials, in particular his large timber sculptures with a perfect pitch between weight, mass and balance was revelatory for Michael Warren. Warren was subsequently to explore a unique sense of presence in his own work working with opposites and contradictions; lightness conveyed by weight, equilibrium by imbalance, human presence through non figurative expression. After Image is one such example of Michael Warren's wood sculptures and was exhibited in ROSC in 1984.

Michael Warren as been commissioned to make site specific pieces internationally including France, Spain, Andorra, Japan and Taiwan. The sensibility of the work is informed by Warren's particular response to actual place, historical connotation or as in the case of Locus 1, Homage to Emile Novis (University College, Galway) philosophical reference. (Emile Novis is a pseudonym for Simone Weil). A robust simplicity is common to all the work which varies the from the austere vertical manifestations such as in Beneath the Bow (Irish Museum of Modern Art) to the sensual curves of Alizes et Tortues in Guadeloupe in The French West Indies.

His approach to his work is informed by Eastern ethos and Warren himself has described his sculpture, much of which is emphatically vertical, as reading downwards like Chinese script.

This work is crafted from Irish Oak and subsequently allowed to weather out of doors to encourage warping, cracks and staining. This illustrates Warren's preoccupation with the wild, knarled nature of wood and the concept of its being fashioned into austere, disciplined forms. It also underlines his ongoing fascination with the qualities of tension and balance. Gravity acquiesces as the composite limbs evince a lightness quite unrelated to the ponderous nature of the medium.

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